Which Giants Veteran Guard's Roster Spot is Most Threatened by Francis Mauigoa?

Despite a growing belief that the New York Giants would double-dip on the defensive side of the ball with their pair of top 10 picks in the first round, they elected to switch over to the offensive line on the backend of their Thursday night selections and take Miami offensive tackle Francis Mauigoa.

Mauigoa, a player that Giants general manager Joe Schoen labeled after the pick "powerful with tremendous athleticism and size", was the first offensive lineman to come off the board at No. 10 and widely regarded as the top overall prospect in this year's class.

What's more surprising about the Giants' latest draft choice is not that they pursued an offensive lineman early in the event, but that it came at the one spot in the position group that they were pretty solid in.

That is the tackle position, where New York has their two stalwart veterans in Andrew Thomas and Jermaine Eluemunor, who they just re-signed to a new deal in free agency, returning, and a budding reserve in Marcuc Mbow, who showed strides as a swing option in 2025.

Mauigoa, who played in 2,468 offensive snaps over three seasons at Miami and consistently rose the ranks to become their starting right tackle last season, would be a pretty solid addition to the tackle depth, especially after he allowed just two sacks and 10 pressures in 826 snaps this past fall.

However, that doesn't appear to be the Giants' intentions for the 6-foot-6, 315-pound Samoan draftee. Instead, the reported plan is for Mauigoa to immediately work on becoming the team's starting right guard, where there is currently a hole ahead of the 2026 season.

It isn't a new job that Mauigoa will shy away from (he even mentioned requesting to get guard reps at practice with the Hurricanes to gain some valuable experience therein his post-pick presser), but a bold proposition given the Giants spent a top 10 choice on a player who played nearly all of his snaps at right tackle, where he earned the seventh-best pass blocking grade in the nation.

Should they have waited until later on to select a truer guard prospect to fill the void? That remains to be seen once Mauigoa gets to work with the rest of the offensive line this summer, but if it works, it could spell trouble for one specific Giant whose time with the franchise was already on very thin ice.

Could Francis Mauigoa's Arrival Put Evan Neal's Giants Tenure on the Edge?

New York Giants offensive lineman Evan Neal | Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

With Mauigoa set to join the Giants and jump right into the right guard spot in camp, this feels eerily similar to the past experiment the organization tried with Evan Neal.

Neal, whom the Giants selected No. 7 and two picks after Kayvon Thibodeaux in the 2022 draft, has been one of the biggest headscratchers for a once highly regarded pass blocker at the college level. He has dealt with nagging injuries since joining the NFL level and struggled to spar with the best edge rushers in the league.

Over his three seasons with Big Blue, Neal has played 1,657 offensive snaps but posted abysmal pass-protection grades, allowing 11 sacks, 20 hits, and 85 total pressures.

He has also been made into a turnstile off the snap by quicker pass rushers, and it's led to him being one of the most penalized Giants linemen with 18 penalties dating back to his rookie season.

Like Mauigoa, Neal garnered a small sample size of reps at guard during his time with Alabama, where he tallied 666 snaps on the left side in 2019. The Giants figured their last resort to salvage Neal's career in East Rutherford was to try him out at guard to see if he could gel and establish a new role in that position.

Sadly, that hope was fruitless for Neal and the Giants, as the former dealt with a nagging hamstring injury and quickly fell down the depth chart to the point where he didn't see the field at all during the 2025 regular season.

The Giants declined his fifth-year option on his rookie contract before re-signing him to a modified one-year agreement towards the end of free agency.

The re-signing felt a lot like having a lack of immediate options to shore up their depth in the guard room, where Jon Runyan remains the shaky veteran on the left side, and Greg Van Roten left in free agency after holding the fort as the starting right guard last season.

Now that Mauigoa is entering the fold and eager to do what he can to impact the team early, it could spell trouble for Neal. He will likely enter a depth battle in training camp with others such as Joshua Ezeudu and Jake Kubas, and if he doesn't come out as a high piece on the depth chart, his time with the Giants could reach its end before the 2026 season arrives.

There will be some skeptics who wonder if the Giants should have just parted ways with Neal and looked elsewhere, but the price of the best free agents was largely out of their range. They needed to wait to see how their draft class fared, and they believe they have something with Mauigoa.

They'd better, as hedging a top 10 pick on an untraditional player for the roster hole they are looking to fill could turn into a huge wasted opportunity if Mauigoa somehow doesn't successfully make the tough transition that Neal failed to achieve and has his Giants tenure close to the edge.

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